The Venezuelan regime gave children controversial gifts for Christmas, including dolls of "Super Mustache" and "Super Cilita," two characters created by Chavismo that depict dictator Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores as superheroes.
🇻🇪 | Súper Bigote (Maduro) and Cilita (Maduro's wife) are the dictatorship's "super hero" toys to ideologize children in Venezuela. A criminal expenditure for this Caribbean Superman-style neo-communist propaganda of the narcomojon Maduro. pic.twitter.com/sn8H9WivcM
- Eduardo Menoni (@eduardomenoni) December 24, 2022
The vice president of the dictatorship, Delcy Rodríguez, informed that the regime delivered almost 13 million toys to children across the country. This includes the region of Tejerías in the state of Aragua, one of the places affected by a landslide in early October that claimed the lives of at least 54 people.
Super Bigote took toys and cotillions to children of Samanna in Maturínhttps://t.co/HNYHIgRt33#PuebloAlegreYUnido pic.twitter.com/ZPh3PlmaZm
- PSUV (@PartidoPSUV) December 26, 2022
A country with "reversed" priorities
The controversial Christmas gifts were met with harsh criticism on social media. Belkis Bolivar, member of the Venezuelan Federation of Teachers (FVM) talked in statements to the agency EFE about the crisis in Venezuela, where since 2018, the country's economy has been in a deep crisis. The monthly minimum wage is below 10 dollars and many citizens do not have sufficient resources to feed themselves:
Priorities are reversed. They give away toys that impose their ideology upon children but deny them the right to a quality education, to have a decent health system... Meanwhile, our schools are failing, teachers are underpaid and without social security. Hospitals also have very limited or no supplies, and health personnel have very low salaries.
😳 Parents outraged in Venezuela over gifts to children of dolls of Maduro and his wife. 🙈 #TellMeSomething pic.twitter.com/rdi8EZSonL
- Yusnaby Pérez (@Yusnaby) December 27, 2022
"Super Mustache" is a children's cartoon television program created in 2019 as a mechanism of propaganda to reinforce the regime's message and indoctrinate the youngest members of Venezuelan society. Inspired by the figure of dictator Nicolás Maduro, the character fights against the United States and its allies. The main villain of the saga is former President Donald Trump, whose command center is the White House.
